Masculine and Authoritarian Leadership in the Film "The Devil Wears Prada"

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In the movie, “The Devil Wears Prada” (2006), Miranda Priestly, the editor in chief and CEO of “Runway” fashion magazine, played by Meryl Streep. Miranda uses masculine and authoritarian ways to do leadership; she is competitive, surly, vindictive, impatient, dominate, direct, task-oriented, meticulous, demanding, and brilliant. She is viewed as a devil boss partly because she is a woman. She manages by intimidating, “Does she have to manage her staff in that manner? Is being nasty an effective leadership style?"

This is not about being nasty or nice – it is entirely about being achievement oriented by focusing on performance and organizational goals. Being achievement oriented, leaders have to recognize that they have to be mindful of and accountable for the choices they make because they are setting the model of what’s appropriate and inappropriate. Words matter, they are as much a form of expression for leaders as they are to poets, singers, and writers. According to Posner and Kouzes(p. 59) to be a leader, you got to awaken to the fact that you don’t have to copy someone else or follow a script and you don’t have to wear someone else’s style. Currently, there are an increasing number of women who are in leadership roles in the workplaces. It is a generally accepted as true that woman are supposed to use feminine ways of doing leadership. However, this is not always true. In some cases, women also use masculine ways of leadership. In this paper, Miranda Priestly illustrates how a female leader breaks traditional gender stereotypes and uses masculine leadership style.

Women, on the other hand, are difficult to classify as a good leaders because in order to be a leader, we often need to sacrifice our femininity. This belief...

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...re difficult to classify as a good leaders because in order to be a leader, we often need to sacrifice our femininity. This belief is actually blocking many women from becoming successful leader. Therefore, even though there are increasing numbers of successful female leaders in the world, such as Hilary Clinton, Condoleezza Rice, and Ursula Burns’s female leaders are still a minority.

I feel that being a woman in leadership people expect that you should be submissive and stay in your place wherever that is. By taking on nontraditional leadership styles to be effective is what is needed to succeed then I am willing to learn how to act like a woman and think like a man. I viewed in the movie how I can get a more thorough understanding of how gender relates to leadership in the workplace and how leadership is actually practiced by people in the real business world.

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